1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for processing a substrate, and more particularly to a method and apparatus for extending the life of a chamber component in a substrate processing system that is susceptible to the accumulation of material deposits.
2. Description of Related Art
During the fabrication of integrated circuits (IC) in the semiconductor manufacturing industry, it is necessary to deposit thin films of material on a substrate and, oftentimes, the film must conform to complex surface topography. For instance, thin film deposition processes are required to metallize back-end-of-line (BEOL) trench/via interconnect structures. These deposition processes can utilize several process technologies, including physical vapor deposition (PVD), ionized PVD (iPVD), chemical vapor deposition (CVD), plasma enhanced CVD (PECVD), atomic layer deposition (ALD), or plasma enhanced ALD (PEALD) in order to produce conformal barrier layers to reduce metal migration in the insulating films and conformal seed layers to facilitate void-less metal fill. The type of deposition process or sequence of deposition processes is generally determined by the requirements of the deposited material, e.g., film conformality, film purity, film mechanical or electrical properties, etc.
The implementation of the aforementioned deposition processes leads to the formation of excess material, such as sputtered adatom (e.g., PVD or iPVD) or excess deposition chemistry (e.g., CVD), on process system surfaces and the accumulation of such deposits from process-to-process. The accumulation of material deposits on various surfaces of chamber components can affect variability in substrate processing results and, hence, can reduce yield. More importantly, excessive deposits can cause catastrophic failure of such deposition systems. Therefore, these depositions systems commonly require frequent cleaning, refurbishment or replacement of various chamber components.